GK

Starting Position

We'll look here at a terrific young GK who plays for a USSF Development Academy team.  While I'll critique his positioning here, in full disclosure, I'll offer that my experience tells me that any college level coach will fix this sort of thing in even the most skilled of recruits, and that this kid is a huge prospect.  Normal developmental criticism here.

In the GIF below, we see the ball played from the corner of the 18 diagonally forward toward the corner flag.  Because the ball is played outside the width of the 18, and well below the penalty spot (ie: less than 12 yards from the goal line) there is very little chance of a shot at goal being taken, and if one were taken, infinitesimally small odds of it beating a GK:

So the issue clearly is that the GK is very tight to the near stick, and when the cross comes in, he can barely put a finger to the ball.  No harm comes immediately, but the next level will see a better ball played in, and better runs from the target players to get on the cross.  The conservative starting position, most importantly, costs the team a corner kick, and a dangerous set-piece situation (30-40% of all goals come from set peices!)  So what could be an easy catch and a chance to counter attack (we can see at least 4 dark shirts inside the 18 so 6 still back covering, but there may be a counter on with good distribution) has now become additional danger.  

It's thinking too small to say that the danger was avoided, even if temporarily, when a more aggressive starting position could have turned the tables completely and created another cause of sleepless nights for coaches, a counter attack.  Little moments like this make and break careers, seasons, and separate the best from the rest.  The good news is that for this particular player, if he can work with good coaching, and take criticism, study his job and put in the time and focus on the training ground, he can easily make this play into something advantageous for his squad.

By way of contrast, here are two pretty good GKs, Keylor Navas and Fernando Muslera in similar situations...for my preferences, I like Meusler's approach a bit better:

Navas first (full video here):

Here's Fernando (full video here):

Attacker's Movements

Creating Options

A hot topic in the circles I'm running in these days is the movement of the front players when they're off the ball...how to get players to be more dynamic (and yet not frenetic/chaotic) and purposeful when breaking the final line of defense is starting to feel like the holy grail.  Or shopping for unicorns.

Here's a couple GIFs of good movement...very likely the first installment of a series, as these are merely two examples of a great many patterns of movement players may choose from.

MLS haters are fighting a losing battle.  The wide player attacks toward the center as two teammates surge forward, cross their runs, then recover back to remain onside, and execute very tidy combination play to create the goal.  Great stuff.

If you're talking off-the-ball-movement, you have to talk Barcelona.  This is Guardiola-era stuff, but wow...

Wide player is patient, stays wide, receives the ball and attacks centrally, the forwards watch closely, and when the teammate with the ball is facing goal with a bit of room to work, they surge forward and cross their runs, execute an unselfish pass inside 8 yards from goal and score.  The flowing nature of this movement, even with the players who don't touch the ball, is wondrous to watch:

The full video of this GIF is at the bottom...4 minutes of top-class analysis:

Grit

The Meek May Inherit The Earth, 

But The Brave Will Win Ball Games

In investigating the shooting percentages of NCAA Division III men's soccer, the curious relationship between the 10 power conferences and their shooting stats was uncovered.  In a nutshell, the strongest conferences miss the target more often and score just about the same number of goals than the less-competitive leagues ("strongest" and "less-competitive" are highly debateable terms, but with all due respect to the teams involved, it's a useful shorthand.)

Here's the top ten leagues (it's actually top 9 but I'll update it soonish) with an overall goals-per-game average of 1.72 :


Now, the bottom 10 leagues, overall goal-per-game average of 1.64:


The bottom 10 miss the target somewhat less...they also play a weaker schedule, typically, but you'd also expect that weaker leagues are that because they have less talent, across the board.  So, conceivably, the shooting ratios could remain fairly even, but the top teams are skewed somewhat toward missing more.  Maybe those "better" players are over-confident and take shots from poor areas.  Or, better teams are better organized (better coaching??  That's hugely debateable) and so the raw offensive talent has a harder time breaking down better organized teams.  At any rate, I half expected to see the top leagues hit the target with noticeably greater accuracy.

So I'm somewhat confounded...

But, using the wonderful database at whoscored.com, where the data are recorded with more precision and reliability, I found the EPL offered some help.  Most DIII soccer matches have student statisticians who may or may not have a discerning eye when deciding if a ball headed toward goal was intended as a shot or not (among many other statistical gray areas).  For the EPL, I found this over two seasons:

This chart shows the Shots Not On Target as a percentage of all shots (X axis) and the per-game-average number of goals scored (Y axis) for the 17 teams to play in both the 2012-13 and 2013-14 seasons:

The EPL looked just as lousy as the top 10 conferences in terms of percent of shots not on target!... but something on whoscored.com caught my eye.  They track blocked shots...something the NCAA doesn't require.  When including blocked attempts, if we assume that all blocked shots would have been on target, the EPL squads suddenly look very different (both EPL charts are scaled to the same parameters, so while the dots are clumped, it emphasizes the huge factor blocked shots play).  Here's the proof:

So...NCAA teams miss the target way too much if we factor blocks into the comparison.  Of course, NCAA statisticians don't factor blocks, so perhaps things would look better if they did.  What do we learn from all this?  One, better teams are somehow more wasteful than less competitive teams...this needs much more research.  Two, blocking shots has a massive impact on your opponent's efficacy in front of goal...do NCAA defenders do nearly enough of this?  My gut tells me, though I have no data, that NCAA teams block shots far less often than the EPL players.  Which is crazy, because of all the skills required to play soccer well, standing in front of a guy kicking a ball isn't nearly the toughest to develop.